


Uaigneas

by afinecollector (orphan_account)



Series: Not Waving but Drowning [37]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Brotherly Love, Drug Use, EEG, Epilepsy, F/M, Focal Seizure, Grand Mal Seizure, Heroin Use, Hurt/Comfort, John Watson is a fucking legend, Love, Partial Seizure, Seizure, Sherlock slips up, T/C Seizure, TW: drug use, Tonic-Clonic, absence seizure, best friend - Freeform, epileptic, grand mal, simple partial seizure, tonic clonic, tonic-clonic seizure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-01
Updated: 2016-09-01
Packaged: 2018-08-12 07:43:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7926349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/afinecollector
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lonely without John's constant presence in 221B, Sherlock slips.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Uaigneas

**Author's Note:**

> Uaigneas [pronounced kind of like 'oo-IG-nes'] is Gaelic, and it means 'loneliness'.  
> Quoted lyrics from "You Don't Know" by Westlife.

_‘Thanks for the offer, but I keep my old friends always  
But then I get lonely, counting the endless days.’_

“I didn’t know what to do, John. I didn’t know who else to call.”

John stepped into the flat with a fierce expression but softened his features as he turned to the clearly-shaken landlady. “It’s alright,” he reassured her. “You were right to call me.” 

Mrs Hudson drew her hand away from her lips, “They don’t happen that often, it’s frightening when they do.” She pulled her lips in tight and shook her head. Her eyes were drawn down and sad, her brows crinkled in concern.

“Oh...Jesus.” Mary stopped in her tracks. “Bloody hell,” She took a deep breath, and rested her right hand over her growing stomach, able to feel the baby move as her heart rate rose in shock. 

“Mary, take Mrs Hudson into the kitchen?” John asked her, though it was more of an order than anything, as he crouched down before Sherlock’s convulsing body. Mary obliged, and walked with her arm around Mrs Hudson’s back into the kitchen. 

“It’s okay, mate.” John placed his hand on Sherlock’s hip. “Mary, find out how long…” He over-annunciated, stage-whispering to his wife over his shoulder. When Mary called back with Mrs Hudson’s approximate time of ‘four or five minutes’, John exhaled sharply. 

“Can I help?” Mary asked, suddenly at John’s side as switched from his toes to his knees. She watched John carefully lift Sherlock’s chin and winced at the noises that emanated from the lithe man’s throat. She knew he had epilepsy; she’d witnessed his absence seizures and was sure she’d seen a few momentary jerks of his limbs, but this was big and scary, and alarmingly noisy. 

John looked back at her over his shoulder again, “Please.” He nodded, “In the bathroom cabinet, behind the mirror - there should be a black toiletry bag. There’s...stuff in there. Grab it?” He nodded to her, and Mary dashed down the corridor as fast as the life inside of her would allow, returning in an impressive fifteen seconds. 

Mary drew the toiletry bag open and hovered just behind John, “Five minutes is bad, isn’t it?” She watched Sherlock’s arms, both drawn in at his chest despite lying on his side, contracting in tightly against his ribcage. His eyes were open but vacant and fixed above him whilst his jaw worked as though he were chewing, allowing deep groans, grunts and sludgy gasps to escape his throat.

“Could be,” John said, without looking up, focusing on the thin line of blood that was trailing from Sherlock’s mouth with the thick saliva. “He’s bitten something - his cheek, his tongue…” He peered up at her. “His phone,” he nodded to the arm of Sherlock’s armchair, just out of his reach even if he stretched over Sherlock - which he wasn’t prepared to do at the moment. Sherlock was wedged in the space between the two chairs. Mrs Hudson had said on the phone she’d heard a clatter and came up to find him seizing on the carpet, clearly having been taken more than a little unaware by the onset of the seizure. “Call his brother.” 

“Brother?” Mary raised her eyebrows. “I thought you were going to say call the paramedics.” 

John nodded his head in agreement with her, drawing his hands away from Sherlock. He sifted through the toiletry bag as he spoke, “We’ll do that too, but if we don’t contact Mycroft we’ll have bigger headaches than Sherlock will.” He looked at his wife seriously. “So call him,” He nodded, “Now.” 

The treble nine call was made in the approximate seventh minute of Sherlock’s seizure - a seizure that showed no signs of releasing his limbs. With Mary and Mrs Hudson banished to the kitchen, John had administered PR Diazepam, but it had done nothing by the time the paramedics were let into the flat in the approximate eleventh minute. Mary drove to the hospital while John rode with Sherlock in the ambulance. Sherlock’s seizure continued through triage, and in the bay, and until a second, intravenous bolus of diazepam was administered in minute thirty-six. 

Sherlock was hooked up to an EEG, supported with pillows to lie on his side, and monitored by a hospital ‘sitter’, even as John waited, pacing back and forth beside the bed, too. Words like ‘aspiration pneumonia’, and ‘brain damage’ were bandied around and John didn’t like it. He knew Mycroft wouldn’t like it, either. What John hated most, though, was the results of the postictal blood screen. Mycroft really wouldn’t like that. 

 

 

When Sherlock blinked open his eyes, the first thing he did was poke his tongue into the thick ulcer that was painful was squishy against his teeth on his left, inner cheek. He winced as the pain increased, and mingled immediately with the headache from hell and an ache in his shoulders like he’d been lifting the weight of a Dodge truck for hours on end. He screwed his eyes closed again and licked his lips, involuntarily sighing loudly as he exhaled. 

“You cock,” Sherlock eased his eyes open again, and found his vision blurry as his eyes focused on the person before him. “Don’t think that going back to sleep will help you win this, Sherlock,” _Ah, John…_ “If you were struggling, you could have called me. I would have been there, you know I would. _Heroin!_ Mate...you should have called me.” Sherlock blinked slowly, and suddenly John’s face was clearer. “Your brother’s here - has been for the last twelve hours. I can’t talk to you right now but I’m not leaving you, I’ll be coming back, because that’s what friends do, Sherlock.” 

Sherlock closed his eyes again, able to feel his lashes on his cheeks as his body felt light for a moment as the promise of fulfilling his want for sleep began to wash over him. He inhaled slowly, winced as he moved his arm a little and felt the deep muscular ache across his shoulder, and huffed a sob-like sigh out through his nose. The single sob became more than one, as he realised he didn’t really realise much; John was angry, everything ached and that ‘post-seizure headache’ was unmistakable, but he couldn’t work his fatigued and aching mind around anything more. And then he felt a hand on his hip. 

“It’s alright, Sherlock.” _Mikey…_. “Take it easy, just settle. Sleep it off, and we will discuss which rehabilitation facility you’ll be going into when you’re compos mentis.” _Facility...oh…_. “I won’t let it go, brother dear, you will keep up your promise. But for now, sleep and I will be here, now and every, single time.”

 

 

Mycroft watched Sherlock sleeping for four hours. His body twitched, such as it did on occasion, and the EEG indicated he had nine partial seizures. If not for the fact it made Sherlock look like an alien, it was the for the candidness that he hated the EEG. It told him things he didn’t like to know, gave him hints as to the secrets of Sherlock’s brain he’d been blissfully happy pretending didn’t happen as they’d grown up. Sleep meant peace for Sherlock - all the Holmes’ thought so. Learning, as he did a while ago, that this wasn’t the case had made Mycroft’s stomach feel tight. 

But he didn’t waver, he didn’t leave. He never did. He was there - last time, this time, and next time.


End file.
